Cutting the Ropes
by just.an.anon
Summary: Hiccup wakes up, lost & confused, after the battle with the giant dragon.


This is an interpretation of the emotions & thought processes Hiccup might have been having at the very end of the movie.

**WARNING!** Rated T for a very brief, graphic description of what happened to Hiccup's ill fated left leg. If you're so squeamish that the thought of getting burnt makes your stomach churn, I wouldn't read this. Or read it, and just skip the paragraph beginning with "The next feeling Hiccup wished he hadn't remembered." The rest of it is basically G rated.

Disclaimer: I don't own _How to Train Your Dragon_ or the characters.

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Hiccup awoke to a sound he had become quite familiar with over the past few months; the strange grumbling purr that was Toothless' voice. The oddly soothing sound coaxed the young not-yet-a-viking to open is eyelids, which for some reason, felt much heavier than usual. His vision was a tad fuzzy, but the massive blur of black in front of him was unmistakeably Toothless.

"Hey Toothless," he smiled weakly. The dragon beamed and smiled at his human—as best a dragon can smile—and nuzzled him gently in the face with his broad, scaly muzzle. "It's good to see you, too, buddy," Hiccup chuckled. Toothless was acting a little more enthusiastic and lovable than normal, and Hiccup idly wondered why that was.

But is train of thought was derailed by a sudden pain in his neck. Toothless' display of affection had pushed Hiccup's head and upper body to the side, causing his neck and back to turn, eliciting a dull and uncomfortable throbbing sensation. His spine was stiffer than he had ever felt it, even more so than all the times he had been knocked over by dragons into wooden barriers during training with the other teenagers of Berk.

In fact, now that he thought about it, Hiccup realized that his entire body was sore--right down to his very fingertips. What had happened that was so bad that it made all of him hurt this much? His mind began to race in panic. Had he nearly been killed during training? If that were the case, who saved him? Hiccup could handle any dragon, and everyone in Berk knew it. So how could he have possibly gotten this beat up by one? What had gone wrong in the arena?

Or what if...what if had he fallen off Toothless? How far had he fallen? It must have been far, he imagined, for it to have hurt him this much. Had the tail prosthetic failed, sending them crashing back down to earth? His eyes scanned his dragon's tail for the prosthetic he had made and found that it was missing.

The prosthetic was not the only thing gone, he realized. Toothless' saddle and harnesses were conspicuously absent, as well. Hiccup had no recollection of removing them, and he knew Toothless himself would not have been able to get them off without the help of human hands.

While looking over his dragon, Hiccup's vision had focused and his gaze turned to what was behind Toothless. Wooden beams, a set of stairs, a table. Horror overtook the young dragon-rider as he realized where they were.

"Uh, we're in my house...You're in my house!" he stammered as he sat up in the bed he was lying in. "What, uh..oh, okay, okay..."

Apparently, Hiccups' sudden alertness excited Toothless. The dark-as-night dragon began to happily leap around the small, cramped house. He knocked things over and causing a massive amount of racket, the dragon jumped into the rafters as if they were a perch made for him.

"No! Tooth--aw, _come on_," Hiccup groaned in exasperation.

'_Okay, we need to get you out of here_,' Hiccup thought, still panicking. He ignored the pain and the stiffness of his mysteriously sore body and made to get up. He threw back the blanket and was ready to swing his legs over the side of the bed when something strange caught his eye.

His left foot was no longer a real foot.

Rather than the fleshy, five toed appendage that should have been there, his foot was now a silver piece of metal bent and a 90 degree angle. This piece extended up and was fixed to a spring that was where his shin should have been. The spring was encased in another piece of metal, this one tied securely to the stump that was all that remained of his lower leg.

The sight of his missing foot made Hiccup freeze, and a tidal wave of realization washed over him. His gaze was fixed on the bizarre new addition to his person as the memories came rushing back in a flood of colors, sights, feelings and smells.

It was the mixture of colors that came back first. The muted hues of the rocky, gray seashore. The specks of brown and silver that were the vikings and their useless weapons. The bright splashes of reds, yellows, blues and greens of the dragons his peers rode that contrasted so sharply with the dull gray of the clouds through which they flew. The pale blue scales and spots of maroon spikes that made up the giant dragon they fought. And finally, the blinding orange of the great plumes of flames that threatened to swallow Hiccup, Toothless, and the rest of the vikings and dragons.

The colors then blended together to form the sights. Speeding toward the Nest with his 5 trainee friends on their newly befriended dragons. The sheer size of the giant dragon now that it was out in the open, and how small his dad and Gobber looked in comparison. The flash of blue, then explosion of orange that were the trademark attack of the Night Fury he rode. They had fired attack after attack at the giant dragon, strategically creating holes in its wings and the final, risky killing shot straight into it's gargantuan mouth.

All the while, a surge of adrenaline had been coursing through Hiccup's veins. He had never felt like this before, and he wondered if this is how all the other vikings normally felt while batting dragons. No, nobody could have _ever_ felt like he felt right then, zipping through the sky astride the fastest, deadliest dragon ever to be seen by vikings. This was a rush that Hiccup knew had never been felt by anyone, anyone but _him_. This was his moment; the moment he became a viking, a man, a hero.

But this euphoric feeling was cut short by an onslaught of panic, fear, and desperation when he and Toothless were hit by the enormous clubbed tail of the giant dragon. His harness came unhooked, and he began to plummet down to earth and straight into the huge column of fire what was rapidly engulfing their adversary. While those three emotions did not completely subside when Toothless shot toward him and held him to his scaly chest, Hiccup did feel slightly safer now that he was reunited with his best friend...even if said friend had a broken tail-fin and they were still helplessly falling.

The next feeling was one Hiccup wished he hadn't remembered. Toothless' scales were impervious to the flames though which they were falling, so he had wrapped his wings as best he could around his human. But unless they wanted to die from the impact of hitting the ground, he needed to extend at least one wing to slow their decent. As the dragon did so, Hiccup's left boot quickly caught fire. The fur-lined shoe was nothing but fuel for the flames, and in a matter of seconds the fire had burnt it away and was now charring Hiccups foot. Like the adrenaline rush, this was a feeling Hiccup had never experienced. However, unlike the adrenaline rush, this feeling was as _far_ from enjoyable as it could have possibly been.

Then Hiccup remembered the smell. The sickening, stomach churning smell of his own burning flesh. He could not see it, but the boy could smell that the flames had already burnt through the skin and were now consuming the muscle underneath. He was vaguely aware that he was yelling; howling in pain, begging Toothless to do something, do _anything_ to make it stop. The dragon, whose concentration had been solely focused on slowing them down enough that when they inevitably met the ground that it was not deadly, seemed to have heard his human's cries and once again enveloped him in both of his leathery, protective wings. The fire on Hiccups leg's was smothered out, but he could still feel his flesh smoldering.

It must have been then when he passed out.

All of this had taken just a few moments to recollect. Hiccup was still staring down at his new foot, wondering what he was going to do now. As he swung both his flesh foot and metal foot over the bedside and onto the floor, the young man decided that he was not going to let keep him down. Look at his mentor Gobber, after all. The old viking had lost a leg _and_ a hand, and he still managed every day with a smile (albeit a crooked smile with a fake silver tooth). Not only that, but Gobber was still capable of doing normal things; he could craft weapons just as well as any two-handed smith, go about daily activities like eating and dragon training without difficulty, and even fend of dragons like all the other vikings.

And what was more, even Toothless had managed to overcome losing a vital part of himself. With the help of his human Hiccup, the damaged Night Fury had proven the old viking adage of "a downed dragon is a dead dragon" completely wrong. Who would have ever imagined a dragon with only one half of its tail would ever once again take to the skies? Even before being given his prosthetic tail-fin, Toothless had never stopped trying. Hiccup remembered watching the black dragon relentlessly attempt to get out of his small canyon enclosure. Toothless had not treated his amputation as the end of the world, so neither would Hiccup.

This was not a handicap. This metal foot was just a part of who he was now, like Gobber's peg-leg and interchangeable hands, like Toothless' cloth tail-fin. It was not what defined him. It was simply just a small piece of the whole that was Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.

With this new found determination, Hiccup rose to his mismatched feet and started to make his way toward the door, only to find himself stumbling toward the floorboards. Toothless was quick to catch his falling friend, just as he had before in the fight against the giant dragon. "Thanks, buddy," he breathed. As Hiccup grasped his dragon's flat head, his stomach turned over. '_Oooh-kay, this won't be as easy as I thought. Maybe I need to take it a bit slower_,' he thought to himself as he straightened up with Toothless as support. The odd pair slowly and unsteadily headed toward the door, and Hiccup continued to think to himself.

Right, so he was not completely solid on his new foot yet. This was nothing to be discouraged about. It had taken time for Toothless to adjust to his prosthetic, so why should Hiccup be any different? Like his dragon, learning how to live with a new man-made appendage would be a gradual process. Hiccup could deal with that. He had, after all, been patient enough to train a dragon—a feat never accomplished by any other viking. People had always considered him "different", even his own father. Well, _especially_ his own father. And while Hiccup accepted that he was, in fact, different, he also knew he was something more. He was special. He thought outside the box, which helped in him in creating the special canon that fired the net that had taken Toothless down. He wouldn't kill a dragon even though he should have wanted to. He had freed, helped, befriended, and trained a beast that his people had hated and fought for seven generations. He and Toothless took down the biggest dragon there ever was, and although they did not exactly come out in one piece, they had lived to tell the tale. And now Hiccup was going to use this unique 'specialness' to conquer this lack of two actual legs. Yes, he was going to get through this just fine because that was just who he was; different, yet special.

While he was glad to have resolved this inner turmoil, Hiccup understood he needed to focus on other things at the moment. He was not sure how it had happened, but Toothless was in his house. This was bad, bad, _bad_. The last time Hiccup had seen Toothless and his dad in close proximity, the dragon had nearly blasted the viking into oblivion and Stoick had captured, chained, and used Toothless as a tool to find the Nest. Hiccup needed to get his dragon out of this father's house before the viking chief came home, so he wrenched open the front door...only to be greeted with the sight of a Monstrous Nightmare hovering in the air just outside. He slammed the door shut and turned to his friend.

"Toothless, stay here!" he said, then stepped through the door and closed it behind him.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he was now seeing.

The seaside village of Burk was now teeming with dragons—_tame_ dragons. The vikings were not yelling, were not brandishing torches and axes, were not defending their land against the dragons. No, they were living right alongside the dragons. Some were even riding them like Hiccup and his peers had. He saw further down the hill a new building that looked like a huge coop in which several dragons were resting. There were even large food dishes filled with meat and fish. Humans were patting dragons on the head, and dragons were nuzzling humans.

"Right, I'm dead," Hiccup said, gaping at the unrealistic scene playing out before him. This could not be happening. He was dead, and this was some strange version of the afterlife that was what Hiccup had wished his home was like.

"No, but you gave it your best shot," his dad Stoick said, and Hiccuped turned to see him coming up the hill. "So, what do you think?" the hulking viking chief said as he gestured toward this bizarre new Burk. Before he could respond, the villagers spotted Hiccup on the doorstep of his house and came rushing toward him. They hailed him to as a hero, and Hiccup came to realize that yes, he _was_ a hero. He had Toothless had taken down the giant dragon that was responsible for the seven generation long war between the vikings and dragons. Dragons were no longer to be feared because they did not have to steal the vikings' food for their hungry master. Dragons were actually _welcome_ in Burk now. Hiccup had changed the way both vikings and dragons lived for the better.

Hiccup had tried so hard in the past to prove himself. He had fired his net-cannon several times in attempt to catch a Night Fury. He had tried to get in the action like a real viking. He had tried starting dragon training. He had even tried killing Toothless. It was funny, Hiccup thought, that it was not until after he had _stopped_ trying to prove himself, had stopped trying to be a _hero_, that he actually become one. He had not untied Toothless to be a hero. He had not thrown down his shield and knife during his final exam against the Monstrous Nightmare to prove himself. He had not set off toward the Nest with the other trainees to get the glory of saving the day. He had not fought the giant dragon and lost his leg to attain the praise he was now receiving.

No, the claps on the back, the cheers, the smiles, the admiring looks from the villages and the proud one from his father were all products of Hiccup just trying to do _the right thing_. And he _had_ done the right thing—repeatedly. And while at first it seemed like doing what he felt was right had caused him nothing but trouble, now looking out at this beautiful new Burk and surrounded by people who thought of him as a hero, Hiccup was glad that he had cut those ropes.


End file.
